To Ignore or Confront? Dealing with Racially Stereotyping Comments

The man continued to make racially stereotyping remarks. He was a work associate of a friend of mine, we were all having a drink together, and I was getting uncomfortable. I knew that if I said nothing, I would continue to feel bad and awkward. I worried that if I confronted him, that both my friend and his work associate would be mad at me. A classic no win situation.

Black History Month seems like an appropriate time to discuss dealing with these awkward social situations. In the last few years, I've learned about the consequences of both confronting and ignoring stereotyping comments. Alex Czopp, a colleague of mine at Western Washington University, has studied confronting people when they make racially inappropriate comments. Czopp and his collaborators first had to create a situation in which people would make racially stereotyping remarks - tricky to do in a lab situation in which people know they are being observed. They did this by asking people to engage in a computer communication task with another person (actually one of the experimenters).

The task for participants was to look at pictures of people, read a comment about each person, and then generate a response comment. Three pictures of Blacks set up participants to make racially stereotyping responses. For example, a Black man was pictured with the comment: "This person can be found wandering the streets." This led many individuals to generate their own comment that he was a poor person or homeless (rather than a tourist). One depressing aspect of the research is the number of racially stereotyping comments that were made by the participants.

In some of the experimental conditions, the partner in the task confronted the participant for the racially stereotyping comments. The partner (really one of the experimenters) sometimes made a polite confrontation based on being fair to everyone and sometimes made a more aggressive comment accusing the participant of making prejudiced comments.

Confrontation decreased future racially insensitive remarks - this is great news. Confronting the participants about their racially stereotyping comments decreased the same and related behaviors on subsequent tasks. Polite confrontations were just as effective as more aggressive ones.

But like many things in life, there were costs that went with the benefits. There is no free social justice lunch. The participants who were confronted were generally angry at the confronter and didn't like the confronter as much as they would have otherwise. The negative response was smaller following polite confrontations, but the negative response was there nonetheless. If the confronter was Black, the negative response was stronger that if the confronter was white. Blacks (and by extension women and other racial minorities) pay a high price for calling people on their stereotyping comments and behaviors. I told my sons when talking with them about this research, that as white males, they have a particularly high responsibility to confront people for stereotyping comments. Thus confronting has costs (negative responses from the people we confront) and benefits (a decrease in future insensitive behaviors).

Ignoring the behavior also has benefits and costs. The benefit of ignoring the boorish behavior is that the potential confronter is less likely to upset the individual making the inappropriate remarks. The potential confronter doesn't risk whatever personal or professional connection they have developed with the individual making the stereotyping comments. The costs are crucial to consider, however. First, not confronting means that the individual will not only continue, but may actually increase, the racially stereotyping comments. The individual may take acquiescence as acceptance and approval. Failing to confront has costs for the potential confronter as well. The potential confronter will be the person who feels bad, may come to dislike the insensitive person who might have been willing to change, and may continue to reflect on failing to confront. Worse, if the potential confronter is a member of the offended group, they may feel worse about their own racial group and experience poor performance on a variety of unrelated tasks (a phenomenon known as stereotype threat).

I am ashamed to say that I didn't confront that individual for his racially stereotyping comments. I wanted to maintain my friendship and not risk my friend's work relationship. I missed an opportunity to decrease stereotyping responses and thus improve the world a little. I didn't know about the research by Czopp and his colleague then. Now that I do, I am committing to politely confronting inappropriate comments. I'll suffer the small interpersonal cost of angering a few people for the hope of decreasing prejudice in my community.

In personal experience, I've found that the more diverse the environment is, the less likely those issues will arise. Unfortunately, in less diverse environments I have had to tell people that I don't tolerate "racially stereotypical language." The bright side is that as an adult it has always been a productive encounter for me.

Thank you for your research and blog posting. "Black History Month seems like an appropriate time to discuss dealing with these awkward social situations." I respectfully disagree. A symptom of the overarching problem that is race relations lies in the assertion by men and women of letters such as yourself that race and the discussion of race is synonymous with blackness or, in the absence of ostensible blackness, non-whiteness(whether this is a concious assertion or not). The construct of race applies to the Irish, German, Welch, Jew or Italian man as much as it does to women and racial minorities (amongst others) because they are all social constructs with historical narratives attached. Racialization of these mostly European groups is almost nonexistent as they have been assimilated into homogeneous grouping of "whiteness" in America. Your research postulates social conventions that are well known to any black person walking the streets of a predominantly white city or who is employed in a predominantly white work environment and your proposed rememdy casts white Americans in the familiar benevolent role of savior to the helpless minorities (in much the same fashion as The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade have to name just a few). In addition, your proposed plan of action places an undue hardship on white Americans who are conscious of this schism by asking them to bear the yoke of correcting the malignancy of racial stereotyping in others. The solution is not for women and racial minorities to become less vocal for fear of consternation or retaliation but to become more vocal in denouncing such behavior in concert with the majority culture not tolerating racial stereotyping in their presence nor in themselves as you've asserted. We also must fight for a society where social convictions and customs are not legislated on Capitol Hill and forced upon the masses as laws but are the by-product of the respectful intercourse that naturally occurs amongst free men and women embarking on an unimpeded journey in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

It is tempting without knowing the stakes of your circumstance to label you pathetic or short of wit. There are alternatives to a full blown confrontation, especially if you can channel your angry outrage and calmly engage the bloke on his racism,for ex. by asking non-judgemental questions that get to the root of his hateful assumptions, and as such, nudge him supportively to expose himself to your friend as a bigot to a point past nuance and denial. At least you'll be a non-passive participant and might even have enjoyed the part.

Stereotypes can be kept in check, somehow, but it is highly disappointing when they are coming from people you expect less. It is also related to culture and social sensitivity. Some societies are more permissive than others from this standpoint, racial stereotypes have different social echoes. Then again, one thing we could do is lower our standards and add a nonchalant view to our approach, enough to avoid cognitive dissonance, where you'd have to choose between ruining a friendship (like in your case) and standing up for your beliefs. What is even sadder, it is when a psychology professor has racially stereotyping comments (transcript 12 of Bloom's Intro to Psy Class at Yale). Then again, apart from Romanians no one else perceived that comment as racial or insensitive and most Yale students laughed. On the other hand, once learnt, the stereotypes are self-perpetuating and hard to get rid of. Psychologically speaking, they protect the stereotyper's self-esteem. Now imagine what kind of self-esteem issues your racist acquaintance could have. Maybe you should have recommended therapy to that person :-) Sometimes being confrontational will not "teach them a lesson". Apart from being unpleasant, stereotypes are timely efficient because for the stereotyper it simplifies things. And we all want to save time, as getting to know the other would involve time, energy, emotions, knowledge etc.

Next time, just lower your expectations :-)and try to see beyond the stereotyper's reasons. You might end up pitying them neither confront nor ignore. :-) Nice article, anyway.

I always treat these rubes with the contempt they deserve. I would not stand for ill treatment, verbally or otherwise, of anyone. Perhaps I just live in a different environment (religious university) but I have always been able to stop rude behaviour in its tracks.

My response would have been, "Young man, your language is inappropriate. It leads me to believe you have limited intellect as well as limited life experience. Please desist from such vulgarities in my presence."

I would have then responded to anything he said with a kind smile and a tolerant nod. After all, when dealing with young people (whether by age or behaviour) one must instruct before correcting.